Leaving Las Vegas a Film About a Person With Alcohol Dependence

The movie is about an Alcoholic Named Ben that is newly divorced because of his addiction. He was fired from his job, so he left his family and all his things in Los Angeles, California to move to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. He made it to Las Vegas and was driving around when he almost hit a prostitute walking across the Vegas strip. She came to his window and that was the first time they saw each other.

That night Ben is drinking and goes out looking for the prostitute he found her after just a little while. He stopped his car and jumped out to talk to her. He agreed to five hundred and to ride with him back to his dump hotel.

Her name is Sera she is a Las Vegas prostitute that makes pretty good money. She thought she was going back his hotel to do what she normally does. But Ben made a different connection with Sera.

He wanted to talk all night and hang out together. He talked Sera into staying all night till morning. She had a man that she worked for that she had to report to and give up her money well that night she only made five hundred. The man she worked for getting mad and got abusive with Sera. Lucky she got away from him without being killed. She went back to Ben’s hotel to talk him into coming to stay with her at her apartment. He agreed to beat his addiction to alcohol really showed when he was packing his things he only packed his liquor and left his few clothes behind.

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Sera seen the good in Ben he wasn’t in a healthy state to make any kind of relationship decisions. Their relationship was different with him drinking, and her job they definitely had their problems. The Vegas life they are living really made for an interesting movie.

The movie portrayed Ben’s psychological disorder, alcoholism, and his mental depressive disorder. He was an alcoholic that couldn’t go without heavy drinking. After, waking up in the morning after getting completely wasted the night before he would be in withdrawal and shaking till he got his first drink of the morning. He expressed his mental illness in the movie that he moved to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. He needed serious help but he was set that he was going to kill himself drinking. Ben wouldn’t let Sera get him the help he needed. She told him in the movie that he needed to go see a doctor to get help because he was on his death bed. He was mentally sick and that’s what he wanted was to die.

The therapy portrayed in the movie was focused on Sera, she was talking to her therapist in several scenes in the movie. She also had a mental illness that was portrayed that she would talk to the therapist about the things that had happened to her during her prostitution jobs. Sera not only excepted Ben for who he was, Bed excepted Sera for who she was I feel that that was a special part of the movie to me because people are so quick to judge these days. It doesn’t help the mentally ill with what they are going threw it pushes them further in the depressive state that they are in. While, watching Leaving Las Vegas I was accurate portraying that Ben was dealing with Psychological Disorder Alcoholism and Depression.

While, I was accurate portraying that Sera was dealing with post traumatic stress disorder. A Psychological disorder is a syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior. (Myers & DeWall, 2016, p. Pg 506) Ben’s behavior threw the movie portrayed an alcohol use disorder. An alcohol use disorder (popularly known as alcoholism) is alcohol use marked by tolerance, withdrawal, and a drive to continue problematic use.(Myers & DeWall, 2016, p. Pg 102) Along with Ben’s alcohol use he was also trapped in a depressive state.

He was drinking himself to death because he was mentally ill. People trapped in a depressed mood are inactive and feel unmotivated. They are sensitive to negative happenings and recall negative information, and they expect negative outcomes. Nearly half the time, people with depression also have symptoms of another disorder, such as anxiety to substance abuse.(Myers & DeWall, 2016, p. Pg 521) Sadly, Ben was too far gone for help by the time Sera meet him, he had already done the damage to his internal body and was to mentally ill to deal with withdraw from the alcohol. That was shown in the movie when he couldn’t even function in the morning without alcohol he was having the mild withdraw symptoms that happen when an alcoholic has processed all the alcohol in their system. The withdrawal symptoms get a worse hour, by hour after having no drinks for several hours. Many films attempt to accurately portray the true pain and loneliness of addiction, but few manage to do it well. Leaving Las Vegas, directed by Mike Figgis and written by John O’brien, portrays the fall of Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage) due to a crippling alcohol addiction.

The film was a hit, and helped paint a picture of modern alcoholism – a topic many had been afraid to approach. Las Vegas not only displayed once-glorified alcohol use in a negative light, but also opened the door to darker and more authentic portrayals of addiction.(‘Leaving Las Vegas and Alcoholism in Film’ 2017)

Sera had her distorters in the movie that effected her life. Sera was a prostitute that made good money for her pimp that was abusive when she didn’t make enough money. In, the movie he was going to kill her over only making five hundred dollars that night. He had stabbed her with a knife in the past and was abusive. Sera suffered from Post Turmeric Stress Disorder. PTSD is a disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdraw, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feelings, and/or insomnia that lingers for while after a traumatic experience.(Myers & DeWall, 2016, p. Pg 515) Sera had a lot of traumatic experience that she talked to her psychiatrist threw the movie in sense it was like she was talking to her self, but you could tell she way in a therapy in them scenes.

If, this were a melodrama like ‘When a Man Loves a Woman,’ Sera would recognize her role as a co-dependent and Ben would join AA. But this is an unflinching tragedy; Figgis doesn’t cheapen it by preaching the evils of Demon Rum. And while Sera’s frequent monologues to an off-screen shrink provide some insight into her motivations, the psychiatrist never offers an easy, pop diagnosis.(Washington Post) Sera was in psychotherapy treatment threw out the film. It’s common for people that deal with PTSD to see a psychiatrist to work threw what they are dealing with. That’s what Sera was doing working threw her past. Psychotherapy is treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeks to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.(Myers & DeWall, 2016, p. Pg 546)

`The film’s depiction of this pattern of romance and self destruction is flawless. We see how alcohol leads Ben to push away his career, his family, and everything that makes him happy. He also chooses to continue abusing alcohol rather than stay with Sera, the only person who ever accepted him for who he was. Sera too is a tragic figure, and her life takes a series of violent and grim turns as a result of being with Ben. Ben’s story ends in a tragic death due in part to his rampant alcohol addiction which is a real possibility when addiction spirals out of control.